History of Croatian Science

The first known manual about book-keeping was Della mercatura
e del mercante perfetto, (On merchantry and the perfect merchant) written in
1458 by Benko Kotruljic
or Benedikt Kotruljevic (Benedictus de Cotrullis, born in Dubrovnik,
1416-1469).
It is also the oldest known manuscript on double-entry. As such it precedes
Luca Pacioli's description of double-entry for no less than 36 years, so that
Kotruljic's priority is indisputable.

Kotruljic's famous 1464 manuscript on book-keeping,
was printed in 1573 in Venice; editor and publisher was
another oustanding
Croatian scholar - Franjo Petris

The
French translation of Kotruljic's book appeared under the title "Parfait
négociant" in
Lyon in 1613.

In the book he states the following: "I declare that
a merchant must not only be a good writer,accountant and book-keeper, but
he also has to be a man of letters
and rhetorician."

His another important manuscript is Benedictus de Cotrullis: "De Navigatione",
1464, written also in Italian. It is the first known manual on navigation in
the history of Europe. Note that it appeared almost 30 years before the
discovery of America.
The book has been frequently copied throughout Mediteranean.

In this book Kotruljevic mentions places like Bocari (Bakar), Braca
(Brac), Dalmatia, Fiume (Rijeka), Illirico (Croatia), Mare Adriatico, and many
other, throughout Europe, Africa and Asia.
In Chapter XXXXVIII (i.e. Ch XLVIII) he also mentions that in Popovo near Dubrovnik
[25 km NW of Dubrovnik, near the village of Ravno]
there is a huge cave [Vjetrenica] with miraculous
wind: at the entrance the air
is
colder in the summer than in Italy in the winter.

On the islet of Kosljun near largest Croatian
island of Krk there is a beautiful Franciscan monastery,
which had one of the oldest "banks" in Europe. It was
operational from the 17th to 19th century, providing loans
for the poor at low interest rates, to protect them from
exploiters. See "What's on Kvarner," p. 81, available at Appleby.

Frederik Grisogono (born in
Zadar, 1472-1538),
a mathematician, physicist, astronomer and physician, was educated in
Padova, where later he became a university professor. His
commentaries on Euclid's `Elements' were published in
his book Speculum astronomicum terminans intellectum humanum
in omni scientia, Venice in 1507. His most important contribution was the
theory of tides, based on the attraction of the Moon, which
influenced Mark Antun Dominis. He
discovered the antipodal tidal wave. His theory of tides is
described in De modo collegiandi, pronosticandi et curandi
febres, nec non de humana felicitate ac denique de fluxu et
refluxu maris, Venice 1528.

Juraj Dragisic (Georgius
Benignus), Franciscan born
in the famous Bosnian town Srebrenica, suggested a reform
of the
Julian calendar to Pope Leon X in 1514 in his study Correctio
erroris, which was accepted by
the Pope Gregory XIII. The new, Gregorian ca lendar is in use
since 1582.

Giulio
Camillo Delminio (1479-1544), a famous but forgotton Renaissance thinker,
was born from parents of Croatian origin. According to Frances A. Yates
he was "one of those people whome their contemporaries regard with awe
as having vast potentialities". She wrote the monograph The Art
of Memory (1966) devoted to Delminio. Giulio Camillo Delminio is most famous for his Theatre
of Memory (or Memory Theatre), conceived as an encyclopaedic memory aid,
and described in his book L'Idea
del Theatro, published posthumously in 1550 in Venice. It consisted
of of hundreds of images which were arranged on the tiers of an amphitheatre.

His name Delminio reveals that his parents are from Delminium.
The meaning of the name of Delminium in Latin is pasture for sheep, and the
name of Dalmatia has been derived from it (see Catholic
Encyclopedia - Dalmatia), also the name of Duvno. Many thanks to Mr.
Ivo Dubravcic, Delft, for his first information about Giullio Delminio. Delminio's
parents of Croatian origin are mentioned in the book Between the Cross
and the Crescent, A selection from the Dubravcic Collection (by Pietro
Mastruzo & Rita Colognola), Leiden University Library, Leiden 2005, p.
33.

Vinko Paletin (1508-1575), born in the
noble family on the island of Korcula, arrived to Mexico as a young
missionary.
Later, after his studies in Italy, he became professor of mathematics
in Vicenza. For several years Paletin was employed on diplomatic missions
for the Spanish King Philip II. He translated from Spanish into Italian
the work about navigation written by the Spanish cosmograph Pedro Medina
(L'arte del naviger, Venice, 1554). Paletin's most important work
is De jura et justitia belli contra Indias, preserved as manuscript
in Latin, and a more extensive version in Spanish (Croatian translations
exist since 1978 and 1979). He mentioned that builders of Maya pyramids
in Chichen-Itza, Mayapan and Uxumal, as well as builders of huge basalt
heads, were in fact old Cartagians which according to antic authors sailed
off long ago across Gibraltar, and discovered the New World (Hesperids).
Maya Indians recounted to Paletin an old legend about "the arrival
of bearded people from far away". For more details
see [Zoric].

The first technical discoveries
are related to the name of Faust
Vrancic (lat. Faustus Verantius, italianized
name Fausto Veranzio, hungarized name
Faustus Verancsics, 1551-1617).
It is known that he collaborated with Tycho Brache and
Johannes Keppler. Vrancic was fluent in at least seven
languages. At the court of King Rudolph II in Hradcani in
Prague
(Rudloph II was Roman-German Emperor and Croatian-Hungarian
King) he worked as his secretary, and in that period
completed his important dictionary of five most
noble European languages (Dictionarium
quinque nobilissimarum Europeae linguarum: Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae,
Dalmaticae et Hungaricae) and published in Venice
in 1595. He is best known for his book of inventions
in
Machinae Novae, published also in Venice in 1595.
The book was financially supported
by the French King Louis XIII, and the Toscan Duke Cosimo
II de Medici.
Among his numerous inventions the most famous is the
parachute, which
he tested in Venice. It is true that Leonardo da Vinci had a similar
idea earlier, but he made only a rough sketch of it, of
pyramidal shape, while Vranic's parachute had rectangular
shape, as today.

Vrancic also constructed
a mill driven by tides, ropeway, gave a new construction of metal bridges
(suspended by iron chains, i.e. suspension
bridges), described
in his famous book on mechanics Machinae novae (61 constructions,
Venice, 1595). It was not until the late 18th century,
that is, two centuries later,
that such bridges were built. The book was soon translated from Latin into Italian, Spanish,
French and German. A sketch of his well known Homo volans (parachutist)
appearing in Machinae novae is often attributed to Leonardo in
the literature, which is wrong. Vrancic was the Chancellor of king Rudolph
II for Hungary and Transylvania.

Faust Vrancic performed a jump with his parachute
somewhere in Venice in order to test it. This fact
is explicitly stated in a book written by English
bishop John Willkins (1614-1672), secretary of the
Royal Society in London, only 30
years after the jump. The title of his
book which contains this important testimony about Faust
Vrancic is Mathematical Magic of the Wonders that may be
Performed by Mechanical Geometry, part I: Concerning
Mechanical Powers Motion, part II, Deadloss or Mechanical
Motions, published in London in 1648.See Vladimir Muljevic: Hrvatski znanstvenici Antun i Faust
Vrancic, Encyclopedia Moderna, god. 14, II, Zagreb,
1993. I express my sincere gratitude to Professor Emeritus V. Muljevic
for this information.

Vrancic also described in his book Machinae Novae the
first wind turbine:

"...This book is issued in dramatic time for Sibenik and its
environs, for Dalmatia, and the whole of Croatia [that is, issued
during Greater Serbian 1991-1995 aggression on Croatia]. The aim
and importance of this book should be close and clear to any
civilized person: it radiates with Renaissance spirit of activism
and optimism that we also wish to develop in our time, despite
all misfortune brought to us by imposed
war...")

Nikola Sorgoevic, a
sea captain from Dubrovnik (born on the island of Sipan), wrote several books
on navigation, shipbuilding, and tides, and three of them have been preserved.
Two
of them have been published in 1574 in Venice, soon after his death in 1573.

Franjo Petris (Franciscus Patricius, a Croat born on the island of Cres,
1529-1597), a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer,
was lecturing at the University of Ferrara
and in Sapienza in Rome.
During his stay on Cyprus (then belonging to Venice) he
created a rich collection of Greek manuscripts, that finished
in the Escorial.
With his philosophical views
of neoplatonism and sharp anti-aristotelism he influenced Giordano
Bruno.
His most important books are Nova de universis
philosophia
(New General Philosophy) and La citta felice (A Happy Town), published
in
Padova, treating the organization of ideal society, a forerunner of Campanella's "Civitas
Solis"
(1623).
He is buried in the Torquato Tasso tomb in the church
of St Onofrius in Rome.

Marin
Getaldic - Ghetaldus (1568-1622) born in
Dubrovnik,
was the most
outstanding Croatian scientist of his time.
He studied in Italy, England and Belgium.
His best results
are mainly in physics, especially optics, and mathematics.
Among his numerous books let us mention Promotus
Archimedus (Rome, 1603)
and
De resolutione et compositione mathematica (Rome, 1630, in five voluminous
books),
in which Getaldic appears as a pioneer of
algebraization of geometry.

De resolutione et compositione mathematica
libri qvinqvi(Rome,
1630, 343 pp., 22.5 x 31.8 cm), published eight years after his death; a detail
from Lemma XXI; Getaldic is considered to be the main predecessor of Analytic
Geometry.

His contributions to geometry had been cited by Christian
Huygens and Edmond Halley.

Getaldic is the constructor of the parabolic mirror (diameter 2/3
m), kept
today in the National Maritime Museum in London.
During his sojourn in Padova he met Galileo Galilei, with
whom he corresponded regularly.
He was a good
friend
to the French mathematician F. Viéte. The fact that the
post of professor of mathematics had been offered to him in
Louvain in Belgium, at that time one of the most famous university
centers in Europe, proves his high scientific
reputation.A Venetian Paolo Scarpi wrote about him:
In mathematics he was like a demon, and in his heart - like
an angel.

One of the most outstanding
Dubrovnik mathematicians,
physicists and astronomers of the 17th century
was Stjepan Gradic
(1613-1683), who was a Director of the Vatican Library.
Some of his experimental results are cited by Jacob Bernoulli,
and his tractate about navigation incited Gottfried Wilhem
Leibniz to discuss the problem of steering ships using helms.
Gradic's book Disserationes
physisco-mathematicae quatour was published in Amsterdam in
1680.
He died in Rome, where according to his last wish he was
buried in the Croatian church of St. Jerome.

Ivo Puljizic, born in Pucisce on the island of Brac,
made irrigation plans for the Vatican and projected various
Vatican bell-towers in the time of Pope
Innocent X, 17th century.

Quite a number of Croats took part in the first
Christian Missions, especially in South and North America and Asia. Ferdinand
Konscak, or Fernardo Consag (born in Varazdin, 1703-1757),
was a Jesuit and a Croatian missionary in North America. In 1752 he discovered
that Baja California was not an island, as it had been believed
until then, but a peninsula. There is a collection of rocky islets on
the north of the Californian bay named in his honour as the Consag
Rocks (Consag Rocas, or Roca de Consag,
near San Felipe).

Denis Diderot and D'Alambert used some of his
maps for the French Encyclopedia, see "Encyclopedie", Supplement
5 Carte (Paris 1755-1780), where his name is cited as P. Consaque. Alexander
Humbolt used his maps for his "Carte generale... de la Nouvelle
Espagne",
Paris, 1804, and also Arrowsmith in his "Map of America", London
1805.

Konscak spoke various dialects of local Indians, in particular
a
very difficult dialect of Cochinin Indians. He described a sort of boomerang
that Indians used for hunting rabbits. His diaries were printed already
during his lifetime (published by Villa-Senor y Sanchez, Ortega-Balthasar
and Venegas-Buriel), and after his death translated into many languages.
The 1761 copy of Konscak's manuscript about California is held in The
British Museum. His work Carta del P. Fernando Consag de la Compania
de Jesus, Visistaro de las Misiones de Californias (43 pages) is
kept in the British Museum in London, Library of Congress Harper in
Washington,
John Carter Library in Providence, Library of Pomona College in Pomona,
Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino.

His life is described by
outstanding
american historian Peter Masten Dunne in his monograph Black Robes
in Lower California, Los Angeles, 1952. Seven copies of his maps
are published by Ernest J. Burrus in his work La obra cartografica,
Madrid, 1967. In his 2000 monograph Zoric
proved that Konscak was the author of important work Addiciones
a las noticias contemidas en la Description compnediosa de lo descuviert
y conocido de
la California. Since Konscak discovered many springs of pouring water,
it is not surprising that even today there exist shops and warehouses
in California bearing his name: "Licores Konsag", "Konsag Liquor
Store and Mini Market", "Konsaqua" (agua
purificada) etc. For many more details
see [Zoric] and [Gabric].

In his Addiciones... Konscak described the
following amusing event with an (illiterate) Indian who had to carry
a written message
and a loaf of bread from one missionary to another. The Indian ate the
bread on his road, and gave only the message to the missionary, without
knowing that the message said among others that he had to bring bread
as well. Being asked about the bread, the Indian said that he knew
nothing
about it. When the missionary told him that he ate it, he retorted "Who
told you that?". The missionary answered "The paper that you
brought told me that!" The next time the Indian was again asked
to carry two loafs of bread and another written message. On his road
he was
passing by a huge rock, where he left the message, went with his loafs
round the corner (so that the paper could not "see" him), and
ate them. To his utmost amazement, the paper told the missionary not
only
that he ate the bread, but also how many loafs he ate. The Indian, having
admitted that he indeed ate the bread, nevertheless claimed that it was
impossible that the paper could see him eating the bread: "...I hid
the paper so that it could not see me...The paper is the chatterer that
speaks about things it did not see". Taken from [Zoric,
pp. 177-178].

Ignacije Szentmartony (1718-1793) was a Croatian
Jesuit born in Croatian north (Kotoriba in Medjimurje), of a Croat mother
and Hungarian father. After his studies in Vienna and Graz he lectured
mathematics in Graz. In 1751 he went to Lisabon, where he obtained the
title of royal mathematician and astronomer, and as such was designated
to be a member of expedition for determining borders. In 1753 he sailed
off from Portugal to the mouth of Amazon river for geographic research
there. Only a small amount of his work is preserved to these days: two
maps of the Amazon and Rio Negro. By the end of his life, upon return
to Croatia, he wrote the first Croatian kajkavian grammar for Germans:
Einleitung zur kroatischen Sprachlehre für Teutschen, Varazdin
1783. For more information see [Zoric].

The first balloonist in Croatia was Karlo Mrazovic,
who performed two balloon flights in Zagreb with his own balloons in 1789 and
1790. He was born in Boka kotorska. See [Croatia
- Europe, III, Barok i prosvjetiteljstvo, p. 426, the article by Vladimir
Muljevic].

Simun
Stratik (Simone Stratico, 1733-1829), outstanding specialist
in nautical theory, was born in Zadar (in the family
of Schiavoni which came to Zadar from Crete). He lectured
mathematics and nautical theory in Padova, and then nautical
theory at the University of Pavia. By
the end of his life he prepared a new edition of Vitruvius' famous
Architecture (1825) in four books accompanied with 320 tables. He
published among others

his translation into Italian (published in Padova in 1776)
and his commentaries to the book of
a famous Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler Theorie complette de
la construction et de la manoeuvre des vaisseaux (1733);
Euler's text has 360 pp, and Stratik's commentaries 180 pp;
the translation into Italian appeared before English and Russian
translations;

three language nautical dictionary Vocabolario di marina
in tre lingue (Milano, 1813), Italian-French-English (in
three books, the first book has more than 500
pp); the fourth book was also planned, but never issued.

Ludwig (Ljudevit) Mitterpacher von
Mitterburg (Mitterburg = Pazin in Istria, 1734 - 1814), was born
in Bellye (Bilje in eastern Croatia, near Danube river) and educated in Austria.
He studied mathematics
and theology at Vienna University and was appointed a teacher of
religion in 1762. In 1777, Mitterpacher became the first professor
of the newly-established agricultural faculty at the Pest University,
a position he kept until his death. A very popular lecturer,
Mitterpacher also wrote several schoolbooks and lecture notes.
His most significant work was the three-volume
Elementa rei Rusticae, a comprehensive study of agricultural
science and practice. Subjects included cultivation, plant-growing,
horticulture, vine-growing, forestry, animal husbandry and food processing.
His books originally written in Latin language were translated into several
languages and became important works of reference for contemporary science.
Mitterpacher became a member of the Academy of Sciences in Bologna.
Many thanks to Mr. Darko Varga
(from Bilje, Baranja) for having contributed
and Mittepacher's biography to
this web.

Filip Vezdin or Wesdin
(Paulinus a Sancto Bartolomaeo, 1748-1806),
pioneer of European indology, was
born in a Croatian village of Cimov (Hof am Leithagebirge)
in Lower Austria in Burgenland
(Gradisce). He completed his studies of philosophy and
theology, Roman
languages and English in Linz and Prague.
Besides native Croatian he spoke Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese and English.
As a
Carmelitan missionary (with monastic name Paulin of St.
Bartholomew) Vezdin was sent to India in 1776, where he
learned Sanskrit and several Indian dialects.

Vezdin is the
author of Sidharubam seu gramatica samscrdamica, the first printed
Sanskrit grammar in Europe, published in 1790 in Rome. Extended edition
was published in 1804 and entitled Vyacarana seu locupletissima samsrdamicae
linguae instituio.

He wrote numerous works on Indian culture, and
in addition to Sanskrit also learned Malayalam, the Malabar coastal
language,
in which he wrote his works as well. At the request of a local ruler,
King Rama Varmer of the Travancore, he wrote an English-Portugese-Malayalam
grammar. The King, enthusiasted with Vezdin's fluency in Malayalam,
asked him to be his teacher of English and Portuguese in his palace
in Padmanabpuram. Vezdin's works are kept in Rome, Vienna and Uppsala.
The first methodical study
of
connections
between
Indo-European languages is contained in his work De antiquitae
et affimitate lingaue zendicae, samscrdamicae et germanicae disseratio,
Rome 1798.

Vezdin's best known work is Systema brahmanicum liturgicum, mythologicum,
civile ex monumentis Indicis Musei Borgian Velitris, Rome 1791,
dealing with literature, mythology and civil order of brahmanic India,
customs
and the way of life. His most interesting and most popular work is his
travel-book Viaggio alle Indie orientali, Rome 1796. He also
published two philological studies about connections between Hungarian
and Laponian
languages. Vezdin is considered as one of pioneers of European
indology.

About twenty of his books were published already during
his lifetime. Some of them were translated into German,
French, English and Swedish. It is therefore no surprise that he was
a member of the Royal Academy in Naples, and of the Academy "Dei
Volsci"
in Velletri and Padova.

In 2006 a memorial tablet dedicated to Filip
Fezdin was placed in Velletri, a town near Rome, on the building of
Museo Borgia (in Via della Trinita), where Vezdin had been working.
The tablet mentions his Croatian descent: "Croato del Burgenland".
Also, on that occasion an Italian translation of the monograph written
by Dr. Branko
Franolic
about Filip Vezdin was promoted in the City Council of Velletri ("Paolino
di San Bartolomeo, pioniere dell'indologia nell'Europa di fine Settecento",
translated from the English original by Dr. Luca
Leoni).

Memorial tablet dedicated to Filip
Vezdin in Velletri, Italy, 2006
Many thanks to Dr Luca Leoni, Velletri, for the photo and his translation:

TO VELLETRI'S VOLSCIAN ACADEMICPAOLINO DI SAN BARTOLOMEO
BAREFOOTED CARMELITE
IN THE WORLD IVAN FILIP VEZDIN
BURGENLAND CROAT
MISSIONARY IN INDIA
PIONEER OF INDOLOGY
FATHER OF INDOEUROPEAN PHILOLOGY
FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COLLABORATOR
OF THE LEARNED PATRON
CARDINAL STEFANO BORGIA
HE MASTERED HIS STUDIES
IN THE FAMOUS BORGIA MUSEUM
FORMERLY PLACED HERE

Vezdin's research gave a great impetus to investigation
of culture and civilization
of
India
in
Europe.
In 1999 Vezdin's image was carved into the white marble memorial
plaque in the City Museum of Trivandrum, the capital of the Indian
state
of Kerala. Furthermore, the following text was written in the Sanskrit,
Malayalam, Croatian and English languages on memorial tablet in the museum:

Ivan Filip Vezdin, Burgenland Croat, Discalceate
Carmelite, with the monastic name Paulin of St. Bartholomew, a missionary
in Malabar from 1776 to 1789. The author of the first printed Sanskrit
grammar and forerunner of Indian and Indo-European studies to the
great honour of his homeland and the Croatian and Indian people.

Franjo Domin (born in Zagreb, 1754-1819), studied
physics and theology in Vienna and later became a dean at the
Faculty of Philosophy and rector of
the University of Budapest.
He was among the first who cured various diseases by
electrotherapy using static electricity.

The first torpedo was constructed by Ivan Lupis Vukic
in the 19th century in Rijeka, where its production had started in
1866 in the Whitehead factory. He was born in the village of Nakovane on
the beautiful Peljesac peninsula near
Dubrovnik.

The first ship-screw (propeller) has been constructed by
Yosip Ressel in 1827 (the first steamers were constructed
with paddles). Joseph Ressel was of the Czech and German
origin, working as engineer of forestry in the lovely Istrian
town of Motovun. It is interesting that this important discovery
was inspired by ordinary spiral corkscrew. The first propellers
were tested on a boat in Trieste. The first journey across the
Atlantic with screw-driven ship was in 1839 within 40 days, with
Ressel's screw improved by Swedish engineer John Ericsson.

It has led to contemporary ship-screw:

In 1888 Josip Belusic constructed the first
electric speedometer. Belusic was born in the region of Labin in
Istria, and was professor in Kopar. This invention was patented
in Austria - Hungary under the name of "velocimeter."
NOTE: Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) is since recently
credited for this discovery, see
here.

David
Schwarz, a Zagreb Jew (1852-1897),
invented steerable metal airship that is today unjustly bearing the name
of the German count Zeppelin. Indeed, Zeppelin bought
the complete project from Schwartz's wife, shortly after his
premature death.
It is true that in 1897 the `Zeppelin' constructed by Schwartz fell down
during its trial flight near Berlin,
due to
a small technical
error in the propeller, having reached the height of 460 m.
It was 47.5 m long and had 35 tons.

While preparing the project of his flying ship, which
for the first time was predicted to be metal made, he had to resolve
many technical and technological problems. This led to the discovery of
the special aluminum alloy now known under the name
dural, also called
the Schwartz aluminum.

The American Israel Numismatic Association issued two nice
plaquettes in honour of David Schwarz,
see
here.

The Croatian Jews left truly remarkable traces in arts,
music, science and architecture.

It is not widely known that one of the earliest hydroelectric power
plants in the world has been built up in Croatia, on the
beautiful Krka waterfalls. It brought light to the city of
Sibenik. It was built in 1895, one year
before Nikola Tesla's famous power plant
on the Niagara falls. The chief engineer was Ante
Supuk.

Modern Slavic studies were founded by Vatroslav Jagic (born in Varazdin,
1838-1923), professor of philology at the Universities of Zagreb, Berlin, Vienna,
Sankt
Petersburg, Odessa. He was a full member of the Petersburg's
and Austrian Academies of Sciences. A great importance for
the development of Slavic philology had the
journal Archiv fur slavishe Philologie that he
founded in Berlin, and
whose editor in chief he was during 45 years. He also
initiated and organized the
Seminar for Slavic studies in Vienna in 1887, which later
grew out to the Institute of Slavic Studies. His scientific opus
is enormous: if collected, it would occupy about 100 books.

One of the pioneers of telegraphy is Ferdinand Kovacevic
(1838-1913).
He invented the possibility of telegraphic connection along a single
wire (the duplex connection), whereas before four wires had
been used. By the way, Zagreb had its telegraph lines only six
years after the first telegraph lines in the world introduced by
Morse
(Washington-Baltimore, 1844). Telegraph connection with the
Croatian region of Lika, where Kovacevic
was born, had been
established already in 1854. Kovacevic published
several electrotechnical books in Zagreb in German language.

A zoologist of international reputation Spiridion Brusina
(born in Dubrovnik, 1845-1908),
analyzed and classified 600 fossil species. He has a great merit
for popularizing science in Croatia. Natural scientists
throughout Europe named in his honor about 50 species according to his
name.

Vinko Dvorak (1848-1922), Czech who came from Prague
to Zagreb in 1875 and was
lecturing physics at the
University of
Zagreb, was the student of Ernst Mach. He is
well known by his discoveries in acoustics, especially about
acoustic forces. He was the first constructor of
an acoustic radiometer, which
has been unjustly attributed to Rayleigh.

Antun Lucic (americanized name is Anthony F. Lucas;
born in Split 1855, died in Washington 1921)
discovered the first major gusher in Texas,
The Lucas gusher, flowing at the rate of 80,000
to 100,000 barrels per day. It blew in January 1901.
About 50,000 people came to see it.
This meant the earliest massive exploitation of
oil and petroleum in the world.
Antun Lucic, known as Anthony F. Lucas (F. = Francis is after his father
Franjo,
mariner and shipbuilder from the
island of Hvar) believed that the nearby
Spindletop hill, near
the town of Beaumont, covered a
vast pool of oil. His company
became one of the first oil companies in Texas.
Antun Lucic was a mining engineer who completed his studies at
the Polytechnic institute in
Graz, Austria, where also his fellow countryman Nikola
Tesla later
studied.
By 1902, as many as 285 wells were operating on
Spindletop Hill and over 600 oil
companies had been chartered (the population of Spindletop sprang from 8,000
in
1901 to 60,000 in 1902, i.e. in just a year!).
In this way Captain Anthony Lucas
enabled the United States to surpass Russia as the
world's leading oil producer.
With the Lucas gusher, a black-gold rush began,
and fortune-seekers from all over the world poured into Texas.
Over time, Houston became a center of the oil
industry, and a captive of the British-dominated global oil cartel.

Anthony Lucas (Antun Lucic) invented the so called "Christmas
tree", which is the system of valves and
pipes installed on the wellhead to harness a gusher. The "Christmas tree" is
connected to the piping for transportation or storage of oil.

Christmas tree invented by Anthony Lucas
in order to harness
a gusher (photo from [McBeth])

The naval fuel board program adopted by the USA Government in 1901 specified
that all the vessls should be equiped for the burning of oil as fuel. Railroads
in increasing number were using it, and manufacturers were substituting it
for coal and gas.
At that time the automobile industry just began to develop, and the importance
of Lucic's discovery for its further expansion was enormous.

Spindle Top in 1902

Antun Lucic is also considered to be the founder of modern
petroleum reservoir engineering. He was consulting engineer in
USA, Russia, Mexico, Algeria, and Romania. As an expert in mining
he was elected the life long chairman of the American Committee
for Oil and Gas (later called Petroleum Division, more information).
In 1936 The American Institute for Geological and Metallurgical
Investigations founded a prize named after him: Anthony
F. Lucas
Gold Medal.

A museum with 18 m high granite obelisk was built in honour to
the Lucas gusher in Spindletop. There is also 1,5 m granite monument of Lucic
with inscription saying that his discovery revolutionarized
industry and transport,... and changed lives of
people in the whole world.

18 m high granite obelisk, built in honour
to the Lucas
gusher, Spindletop, contains the following lines:

On This Spot
on the Tenth Day of the
Twentieth Century
a New Era
in Civilization Began

In 1943 Lucas' son and daughter-in-law
established
charitable
foundation
in his
name.

Antun Lucic (Anthony F. Lucas) is placed among
200 of most deserving Americans in the course of the entire
history of the USA. There are a street and an Elementary school bearing
his name in the City of Beaumont, Texas.

As to his nationality, it is often mistakenly described as Austrian,
and sometimes even Italian (like in Who is Who in America, where there
is also another mistake - that he was born in Trieste). On his grave in
Rock Creek, Washington, he is said to be of Illiric
origin, where Illiric is a standard name for
Croatian.
For more information about Anthony Lucas see
here, and also

Many thanks to Mr. Vedran Joseph Nazor,
USA, for help to collect data about Antun Lucic.

Dragutin Gorjanovic Kramberger (1856-1936)
was a professor
of geology and paleontology at the University of Zagreb. He
discovered the richest collection of remains of Diluvial Neanderthal people
in the world
on a site not far from
Zagreb (Krapina). He was the first man in
history to have used X-rays to analyze fossil bones (X-rays
were discovered by
Nikola Tesla).

Josip (Juan) Vucetic (1858-1925),
a criminologist and anthropologist born on the island of Hvar, lived in Argentina.
He was one of the pioneers of the scientific dactyloscopy (identification
by fingerprints) and occupied the position of the director of the Center for
Dactiloscopy in Buenos Aires. His method of identification was in use throughout
South America. Vucetic was also the one who introduced the notion of dactyloscopy in
1920, now in current use worldwide.

offered by
Argentinean Escuela de Policia, and in
English.About 250,000 Croats live in Argentina today. It is interesting
that in 1933 the Croatian community in Argentina collected about 50,000 signatures
asking for the right of the Croats to live in the free and independent state.
Similarly in the USA.

The scientific activity of
Vladimir Varicak (1865-1942), professor of
mathematics at the
University of Zagreb, was mainly in
non-Euclidean geometry and its applications to Einstein's
theory of relativity.
His lecture delivered in 1911 at the German Mathematical Society in Karlsruhe
has been published in 1912 in Jahresberichte der Deutschen Mathematike Vereinigung,
and translated from German into Polish (Warszaw, 1913), Russian (St. Petersburg,
1914), French (Paris, 1914). His most important work is the monograph Darstellung
der Relativitätstheorie
im
dreidimensionalen Lobatschefskijschen Raume, Zagreb,
1924, which has been been cited by many authors to these days.

The results of
his
work
have
been
cited also
in
Wolfgang
Pauli's Relativitätstheorie.
One of his students at the University of Zagreb was Vilim Feller, that is, William
Feller, a famous Croatian - American mathematician.

Eduard (Slavoljub) Penkala (1871-1922), born in Slovakia
to a Polish/Dutch family, became naturalized Croat when after his
marriage his
family immigrated to Zagreb.
He invented the mechanical pen in 1906 and fountain
pen in 1907 which are bearing his name and now they are in
everyday use.

Indeed, the name of "pen" is derived from his
family name, and the name of "penkala" is also in use today for the
chemical pen.
The patent was registered in thirty-five countries throughout
the world.

He was also one of the
first constructors of planes (Zagreb, 1910), only seven years
after brothers Wright.

His first invention
was a rasin bottle filled with hot water, called Termofor (hot water
bottle), used in bed as "central heating" during cold nights.

Penkala invented a new plastic mass substance called ebonite,
and used it for production of gramopne records.
He then signed a contract with the Edison-Bell company, England, and a new
company Edison-Bell-PenkalaLtd. was founded
in Zagreb which started the production of
gramophone records based on his original technology.

Another constructor of airplanes was Ivan Saric, who
had been flying in Subotica in 1913 (only 10 years
after
brothers Wright).

Stanko Hondl (1873-1971), professor of physics at
the University of Zagreb, has a great merit for popularizing
Einstein's theory of relativity in Croatia. One of his students was William
Feller,
outstanding Croatian - American mathematician.

Jaroslav Havlicek was born in Croatia, in Garesnica
(1879 - 1950), of the Czech nationality. His steam boiler fed by coal powder
represented a revolution in building large power supplies. A reputed journal Applied
Mechanic's Review included him among 10 most important personalities in
the history of energetics (besides Volta, Fermi, Edison, Tesla). His major
inventions were completed during his stay in Brno (Czechia). Since 1919 he
was a professor in Zagreb.

Franjo Hanaman (1878-1941), chemist and
metallurgist,
invented together with
Aleksandar Just
the first economical electric bulb with wolfram
filament.
During 1910, when Hanaman sojourned in the USA, his patent rights have been bought
by the General Electric Co.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), born in Croatia (at that time within
Austria-Hungary), is well known and need not be particularly introduced.
We feel it is necessary to cite
his words that he was equally proud of his Croatian motherland and Serbian
descent.
He completed his elementary and secondary school education in
Croatia (in Gospic and Karlovac), and studied in Graz and Prague. He
is the father of alternating electrical current technology and the three
phase system. He is equally known by his contribution to the high frequency
technology and wireless communications. The impact of Tesla's numerous
inventions (112 patents during his work in the USA) on the development
of modern civilization is immeasurable. The unit for magnetic induction Tesla,
was named after
him (Conference general des poids et mesures, Paris, 1960). He refused
to receive the Nobel prize which he had to share with T.A. Edison.

Windows of the building of Electricité
de Strasbourg in France,
where Tesla had worked for some time, have inscriptions with
names of outstanding scientists. There you can see his name surrounded with
Laplace, Planck, Bohr, Einstein and Rutherford (click on the
left).
In front of the building of International Union for Telecommunications
in Geneva there is a statue of Nikola Tesla.
When his mother died, he paid a visit to Croatian capital
Zagreb in 1892, where
he gave a lecture about alternating current.
On that occasion he said:

As a son of my homeland I feel it is my duty to help the city
of Zagreb in every respect with my advice and work
(Smatram svojom duznoscu da kao rodjeni sin svoje zemlje pomognem
gradu Zagrebu u svakom pogledu savjetom i cinom; photo),

and
suggested to build alternating current power plant. There is no doubt
that by saying "homeland" he meant Croatia. In 1931, at the age of 75,
Tesla received birthday greetings from Lee de Forest and Albert
Einstein. His monument carved by Ivan Mestrovic,
who knew him personally, can be seen in Zagreb. After the end of World
War II, the famous sculptor was asked by Belgrade officials to prepare
Tesla's monument for the capital of Yugoslavia, but he refused, explaining
that Tesla did not like the city. By the way, the family name Tesla does
not exist in Serbia. Another monument, carved by Croatian sculptor Frano
Krsinic, can be seen near Tesla's hydro power plant on Niagara Falls.
A part of Technical Museum in Zagreb is dedicated to Nikola Tesla. According
to some recreational sources on WWW, four greatest geniuses in the history
of Mankind are Gutenberg, Edison, da Vinci, and Tesla (in this order).
There is not doubt that with a different homeland Tesla's position on
the list would be much higher. Even today, so many years after Tesla's
death (1943), his numerous manuscripts are kept as top secret by the Ministry
of Defense of the USA (see Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time,
Prentice Hall, 1981; Vladimir Muljevic, Nikola Tesla, slavni izumitelj,
Hrvatska zajednica tehnicke kulture, Zagreb, 2000, p. 75.)

It seems that Nikola Tesla was the first one to discover the electron.
This can be seen in his article "Reply to J.J. Thomson's note",
published in Electrical Engineer, New
York, August 26, 1891. In this article Tesla claims that his experiments
prove the
existence of charged particles ("small charged balls"), while
J.J. Thomson denied this.
It was only five years later that Thomson proved the existence of
electron using another
experiment. See [Centuries of Natural Sciences in
Croatia 2, p. 62, article
by
academician Vladimir Paar, outstanding Croatian physicist].

It is interesting that in Bartol
Kasic's dictionary of Croatian language (16/17 centuries) one can
find the name of "tesla", meaning adze. The word
tesla
(adze) is
without any doubt related to Croatian words tesar - carpenter,
tesati - to trim (a log), to dress (a stone).

Among scientists studying
seismology the famous Moho-layer (or Moho-discontinuity) of the
Earth is well known. It was named after the great Croatian geophysicist
Andrija Mohorovicic (born in Volosko, 1857-1936), professor at
the University of Zagreb. His discovery was essential
for understanding the inner structure of the Earth and the behavior of
seismic waves. Together with the theory of forces due to
Rudjer Boskovic,
this is probably the greatest achievement in the history of Croatian science.

Let us cite a part of his biography from Willard Basom's
monograph A hole in the Bottom of the Sea, The story of
the MOHOLE project, 1959/61, Doubledays, USA (p. 143):

...As a boy of
15 he spoke Italian, French, and English as well as his
native Croatian, later added German, Czech, Latin, and old
Greek. He studied physics at the University of Prague
under some famous professors including E. Mach and did his
graduate work at the University of Zagreb, from which he
obtained a Ph.D. In 1894 Dr. Mohorovicic became Director
of the Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics and
Professor at the University of Zagreb in 1897, where he
remained until his retirement in 1921. His special interest
was the precise measurement of time for both astronomical
and seismical events, but his reputation mainly rests on
his classic paper in the field of seismology, The
Earthquake of October 8, 1909, which contains the news of
his discovery of a major discontinuity at a depth of 55
kilometers. This discontinuity, now generally known as the
Moho in his honor, defines the crust of the earth.
Professor Mohorovicic died in 1936 in circumstances
approaching poverty.

Two Croatian names appear on the map of the Moon.
The name of
Rudjer Boskovic was given to a mountain on the visible side, and the
name of Andrija Mohorovicic to a mountain on the dark side of the
Moon.

Mohorovic made pioneering observations of rotor-type circulation in
bora. For more information see the following article:

Vanda Grubisic and Mirko Orlic: Eearly observations of
rotor clouds by Andrija Mohorovicic [PDF],
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
(vol. 88, 2007, str. 693-700) [many thanks to dr. Orlic, University of Zagreb,
for the PDF]

Stjepan Mohorovicic (1880-1980), professor of
physics at a grammar school in Zagreb, made a very important
theoretical discovery of the positronium (rotational
pair of electron and positron) as early as in 1934, published in
"Astronomishe Nachrichten", a prestigeous German scientific journal (precise
reference is
A.
Mohorovicic, Astron. Nachr. 253, 94 (1934)). Its existence was confirmed experimentally
in
1951 by Martin Deutsch, MIT physicist
(and a
member
of Manhattan Project).
Still
earlier,
in
1927,
Stjepan
Mohorovicic
predicted
the
existence
of the MOHO-layer on the Moon, analogous to that of the Earth, discovered
by his father Andrija Mohorovicic.
Its existence has been
proved
in
1969 during the famous Apollo
11 flight to the Moon. Seismic measurements
have been carried out by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, the first humans
to
land
on
the Moon.

As an explorer, Dragutin Lerman (1863-1918) was a member of
Stanley's expedition to Congo (Zaire), and a commissary
(Commissaire General) of the Belgian
government in Congo. By the end of his career
the Belgian king Leopold conferred the
knighthood of Lion's order on him. And the famous Stanley
wrote: "The Croat is energetic, cautious, in high
spirits..." It is interesting that in 1882 Lerman discovered huge
waterfalls on the river of Kwil, which he named the Zrinski
Waterfalls (Zrinski chutes), in honour of a famous Croatian family of
rulers.
He
donated
about
500
artifacts
related
to
various
traditional African
cultures to the Ethnographic museum in Zagreb.

They occupied an important position at the
court of Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II. Later they went to South America,
where they founded the society La Mission Cientifica Croata
Mirko y Stevo Seljan and organized some expeditions,
especially in Peru, Chile and Brazil (in the
region of the Amazon).

A gift of Emperor Menelik II to Mirko Seljan,
with inscription on gold plated sword:Ethiopia raises its hands to God (in Amharic)

A charter bestowed by Emperor Menelik II
to brothers Seljan
with inscription in Amharic

Their most important book is Mirko and Stevo Seljan, El Salto del Guayra,
1905, Buenos Aires. Origianlly written in Croatian, so that it could be printed
in the United Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, it was translated
already in 1905 into French. In 1913 Stevo Seljan was elected as a honorary
member of the Mexican Geographical Socitey.

Henry
Suzzallo (originally Zucalo, 1875-1933) was president of the University
of Washington from 1915 to 1926. The central library of the University of
Washington
is
called
Suzzallo Library. His parents Petar and Ana Suzzallo, Croatians
originating from Dalmatia, arrived to San Francisco in 1852.

One of the most outstanding representatives of
photochemistry was Ivan Plotnikov (1878-1955),
a Russian emigrant to Croatia (1918) and a professor of
physical chemistry in Zagreb.

Milan
Sufflay (1879-1931), was a brilliant Croatian
historian and polyglot of international reputation, known by his numerous
scientific contributions, especially in the field of albanology. His mother
was a German from Hungary, and his father a Croat. In 1913 and in 1918, in
cooperation with Konstantin Jirecek and Ludwig von Thalloczy,
he published two volumes of Acta Albaniae (Acta et Diplomata
res Albania mediaevalis illustrantia) in Vienna, in the Latin language.
It covers the history of Albania from 344 AD to 1406. His monograph
Srbi i albanci (Serbs and Albanians), 1925, has been translated
into French and English (English translation from Croatian original by Theresa
Alt and Wayles
Browne, Cornell University, USA). From 1908 till 1918 Sufflay was professor
of the University of Zagreb. From 1918 onward he was not allowed to lecture
any more, and the ex-Yugoslav government in Belgrade did not allow him to
visit Hungary,
Italy,
and the
Vatican for
scientific archival work. It was forbidden for him to accept the position
of professor offered to him by the University of Budapest in Hungary. Despite
all this, Sufflay planned to publish a continuation of Acta
Albaniae in
four additional volumes. The project had been financed by the Albanian
King
Zogu and the government of the state, and Sufflaz even delivered a lecture
in the building of the Albanian Parliament in Tirana in Albanian language
about
his project. The financial support equivalent to today's 3,000,000 USD had
been deposited in a Swiss bank.

Sufflay was assassinated
by a steel rod on a street in
the
center of
Zagreb in 1931, at the age of 52.
After the dramatic
events
that
followed, Albert
Einstein and Heinrich Mann sent an appeal to the International
League of Human Rights in Paris to protect Croats from the terror and
persecutions of the Serbian police. It was also published in the New
York Times (6th
May 1931). As we learn from this letter, the newspapers in Zagreb were
not allowed
to report about Sufflay's activity; it was not allowed to attach a half-mast
flag on the main building of the University of Zagreb in his honour;
the time
of the funeral could not be announced publicly, and even condolence messages
were not allowed to be telegraphed. In their letter Einstein and Mann
hold the Yugoslav king Aleksandar explicitly responsible for the state
terror
over the Croats. The letter concludes that it should not be tolerated
that killings be allowed as a means to achieve political goals. We should
not allow killers
to be promoted as national heroes. He is the author of the first
Croatian SF (science fiction) novel Na Pacifiku 2255. In 2002,
an international congress "Shuflaj dhe
Shqiptarët", dedicated
to
Milan Sufflay, the pioneer of albanology, has been organized in Tirana,
capital
of
Albania. Alfred Moisiu, president of Albania, posthumously decorated Milan
Sufflay with the order of "Naim Frasheri d'or". Sufflay's
written opus comprises about 3000 items.

A
Letter of Protest sent by American intellectuals organized by Roger
N. Baldwin, Chairman of the International Committee for Political Prisoners,
to the Yugoslav representative in Washington on November 24, 1933.

Peruvian Croat Juan
(Jean) Bielovucic (1889-1949) was
one of the first aviators in history. In 1913 he traversed for the first time
the Alps by monoplane
(20km in
26 minutes), reaching
the
height
of
3200
m. In 1911 he performed the first flight in his native Peru, in the presence
of the president of the state. He was one of the founders of Peruvian aviation.
Bielovucic was also director of the Aviation School of Reims. See the monograph
by Jose Zlatar - Stambuk: Bielovucic - pionero
da la aeronautica
Castrense, Lima 1990.

Ivan Jagsic (1886-1956), born as a Burgenland Croat
in Austria, studied cartography, topography and geology in
Zürich. As a professor of University of Cordoba,
Argentina, he lectured also meteorology and astronomy, and
wrote numerous scientific books. The South American
Oceanographic Institute in Brazil was named after him.

Rudolf Fizir (1891-1960), born in Ludbreg in
Croatia, built 18 airplanes. He was awarded the Paul Tissandier Diploma by
the F.A.I. (Fédération Aeronautique Internationale), for his
achievements in developing world aviation. With his two-wing aircraft Fizir,
constructed in 1925, he won the first prize at the Petite Entente contest in
1927. From then on began his serial aircraft production in cooperation with
well known companies: the Fizir-Mercedes, the Fizir-Wirght, the Fizir-Titan,
the Fizir-Kastor, the Fizir-Gypsi, and the half-metallic Fizir-Jupiter.

He also reconstructed some models into hydroplanes. His great success was Fizir
FN, two-wing, two-seat aircraft with double commands (more than hundred
planes!). It was used as instruction plane even 30 years after the end of
the WW2! In 1931 he constructed amphibious aircraft, Fizir 1931, intended
for landing on rivers, lakes and the sea. He also constructed a tourist aircraft
as early as 1935. He also constructed parachutes, like its inventor Faust Vrancic. During the WW2 he worked in Zagreb, lecturing
aircraft construction at the Technical Faculty. After the WW2 he worked in
the Industrial Research Institute in Zagreb. For more information see CROATIA,
in flight magazine, Automn 2000, pp. 89-99.

Stefan Gelineo, Croat by birth, born in Stari Grad
on the island of Hvar
(1898-1971), studied in Leipzig and Vienna. He was the professor of
physiology at the University of Belgrade (capital of Serbia and
former Yugoslavia). He is internationally known by his
contributions to
the study of hypothermia, i.e. the study of vital functions
under low temperatures.

Stjepan Mlakic (1844-?)
Bosnian Croat
born in Fojnica, a missionary in Africa among the tribes of
Shiluks and Nuers in Sudan, like his colleague Kohnen. Very educated, besides his native Croatian
he spoke German, Italian, English and Arabian, to which he added
the language of Nilot tribe of Nuers. His letters to his brother
(also a priest) in Bosnia witness about his very close contacts
with Africans. It is worth to note his discovery that in Egypt, near the town of
Korsko, there is the village of Ibrim, where used to live Bosnian
Muslims (!) inhabited there by a Turkish sultan. He donated a
rich collection of artifacts of African culture to the Zagreb
Ethnographic museum. See [Zoric].

Bernardo Kohnen (1876-1937), German by birth, born near Hannover, moved as a
young boy with
his parents to Bosnia, where he attended the famous Jesuit
gymnasium in Travnik. He devoted about 30 years of his life to
the evangelization and study of life of Shiluks (southern Sudan),
at that time one of the most isolated tribes in Africa, and other Nilot
tribes (Denka, Nuer, etc). "Father Shiluk", as he was called by
the Shiluks themselves, wrote first dictionaries, grammars, and
translated holly and liturgical books into their language,
praised by the english scholars.
Although born as German,
Kohnen spoke and wrote in Croatian. He donated some of the artifacts
of African culture to the Zagreb Ethnographic museum. See [Zoric].

Fran
Bosnjakovic (1902-1993), born in Zagreb,
was one of world's leading experts in technical thermodynamics. Educated in
Zagreb, where his
scientific career
started in 1926, he moved to Dresden, Germany, in 1928. In
1931 he became university teacher at
Dresden High Mechanical Engineering School. After a short stay in
Belgrade, he moved back to the University of Zagreb in 1936.
After 1945, during the Yugoslav communist regime,
he was degraded to two years of forced labor. In 1951
he became rector of the University of Zagreb.

Since 1953 he started lecturing at the High technical school in
Braunschweig in Germany, where he became head of the Department
for thermodynamics and director of the Thermotechnical institute.
In 1961
he founded the Institute of Thermodynamics for Aeronautics
and Astronautics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, that he led
until his retirement in 1968. He also established groups for
Irreversible Thermodynamics,
Mass Transfer and Thermokinetics,
Radiation and Plasma,
and Heat Transfer.
It is interesting that his textbook Technische
Thermodynamik,
published already in 1935 in Dresden, had seven improved and
extended
editions in Germany, and was
translated into English (Technical Thermodynamics) and Russian
(Tehnicheskaya termodinamika). The Croatian translation had
five editions (Nauka o toplini).
See his list of publications held at the
University of Stuttgart.

Professor Bosnjakovic obtained honorary doctorate from High
Technical School RWTH Aachen, Grashof's medal from the
German Society of Engineers VDI in 1969, gold medal from the
Associazione Termotechnica Italiana in Padova in 1966, another
gold medal from the Institut français des combustibles et de
l'énergie in Paris.
On the occasion of his 80'th birthday in 1982 the German Society of
Engineers VDI issued a special publication devoted to his
scientific work. In 1987, on the occasion of his 85'th
birthday, a solemn colloquium was organized by the Technical
University of Stuttgart.
Also, he was a member
of

ECOS
2002 International conference, organized by
the Institute for Energy Engineering at the Technical University
of Berlin, has been
dedicated to the memory of Fran Bosnjakovic.

Bosnjakovic's "Technische Thermodynamik" had till
the year 2000 altogether thirty editions in four languages (German,
English, Russian, and Croatian).

In 1945 the book was translated
as "Technical Thermodynamics I" by Edwards Brothers Inc, Ann Arbor,
Michigan, USA (unauthorized translation), and the same year
"Technical Thermodynamics II" (by the same publisher, also
unauthorized translation).

The first Croatian edition appeared in
1947 in Zagreb.

The first Russian edition "Tehicheskaya termodinamika,
chast' pervaya" of Bosnjakovic's monograph appeared in 1955,
published by the State Energetic Publishing House (Gosudarstvennoe
energeticheskoe izdatel'stvo), Moscow and Leningrad.
The second part of the Russian edition was issued in 1956. In
their Preface to the book the
translators stress the excellency of exposition, and in depth
theoretical analysis. A sample of Russian
edition sent to professor Bosnjakovic contains the following
dedication:
Glubokouvazhaemomu profesoru Bosnjakovicu ot perevodchika etoj
prekrasnoj knigi, na pamyat', V.A. Kirillin [one of translators], 1969, Moskva.

The authorized editions of Bosnjakovic's books in the USA were published
in 1965
by Holt, Reinhart and Winston, New York (20 year after
unauthorized edition).

Danilo Blanusa (1903-1987), Croatian mathematician,
professor at the University of Zagreb, was born in Osijek.
He discovered a mistake in relations for absolute
heat Q and temperature T in relativistic
phenomenological thermodynamics, published by Max Planck in Annalen der Physik in 1908:

Q = Q0 a, T = T0 a ,

where Q0 and T0 are the corresponding
classical values, and a = (1-v2/c2)1/2.
Blanusa proved that the correct relations should be

Q = Q0 / a, T = T0 / a .

This result that he published in Glasnik mat.-fiz i astr., 2/1947 (No
4-5), pp 249-250, in his article "Sur les paradoxes de la notion d'énergie" [PDF],
was rediscovered 13 years later by Heinrich Ott, and published in "Zeitschrift
für Physik" in 1963. It is already time to correct wrong attribution
of this discovery to Heinrich Ott in the scientific literature, since
Blanusa's priority is indisputable. Blanusa's most important work is
related to
isometric immersions of two-dimensional Lobacevski plane into six-dimensional
Euclidean space and generalizations. This result is included in authoritative
Japanese mathematical encyclopedia Sugaku jiten published by Iwanami
shoten, Tokyo, 1962, p. 612.
His work about imbeddings of hyperbolic spaces into Euclidean
spaces has
been cited in 1956 by John Nash (well known
mathematician, Nobel prize for economy; Blanusa is cited
in his paper "The
imbedding problem for Riemannian manifolds", Annals of
Mathematics, Vol 63, No. 1, 1956, pp. 20-63).

Tomislav Petkovic: D. Blanusa’s formulae for heat and temperature
transformations in relativistic thermodynamics and his correspondence
with W. Pauli in 1948, [PPT]

It is not widely known that Max Planck visited the Croatian capital Zagreb
in the automn 1942, when he was at the age of 84. He delivered a lecture
at the University of Zagreb on September 15th, entitled
"On the goals and boundaries of exact natural sciences" (sources:
Priroda, Zagreb
1942,
p
184,
or Glasnik Mat. Fiz. Astr. 2, 1947, p 213).

William
Feller (Vilim, Willy, Willi, 1906-1970) is a well known name among
mathematicians dealing with probability theory. He was born and educated
in Zagreb as
Vilim
Feller, where he studied mathematics, and earned the degree of Master
of Science in mathematics in 1925. Already the next year, at the age
of 20, he defended his doctoral degree in mathematics at the University
of Göttingen,
at that time the strongest mathematical center in the world. He was a
professor at the Universities of Kiel, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Lund,
Providence,
Princeton
etc., a
member
of many scientific organizations. Many important mathematical notions
bear his name: Feller's process, Feller's transition function, Feller's
semigroup, Feller's property.
He is best known for his monograph "An Introduction to Probability Theory
and its Applications", Volumes I and II, on 1153 pp., translated
into Russian, Chinese and Polish. They are considered among the best
mathematical textbooks
written in the 20th century. At the International Congress of Mathematicians
held in 1958 in Edinburgh,
William
Feller gave
a plenary
talk "Some
new connections between probability and classical analysis."

Feller was among those
who initiated
issuing the important Mathematical Reviews journal, and was
its first executive editor (1944-1945).
He worked with von Neumann, one of the creators
of modern computers. Feller was awarded the National Medal of
Science of the USA in 1969. He was in touch with his
relatives in Zagreb, as well as with his colleagues at
the University of Zagreb.

Joseph Doob, a renowned American mathematician, wrote about Feller
the following:

Those who knew him personally remember Feller best for his gusto,
the pleasure with which he met life, and the excitement with
which he drew
on his endless fund of anecdotes about life and its absurdities,
particularly the absurdities involving mathematics and mathematicians.
To listen
to his lecture was a unique experience, for no one else could
lecture with such intense excitement. No one could generated
in himself as well as in his auditors so much intense excitement.
In losing him, the world of mathematics has lost one of its strongest
personalities as well as one of its strongest researchers.

Vilim Feller, extensive biography, with
emphasis on his life in Zagreb, Croatia

Vladimir Jurko Glaser (1924-1984), theoretical
physicist in the field of quantum fields theory, published one of the
first
monographs on Quantum Electrodynamics in the world (Kovarijantna kvantna
elektrodinamika, Zagreb 1955, written in Croatian), at the age of 31. On
p. 8 of the book he mentioned that the existence of positronium has been
theoretically predicted by Stjepan Mohorovicic in 1934.

He was head of the Department of Theoretical Physics
at the Rudjer
Boskovic Institute in Zagreb. In 1957 he found permanent employment
at the Department of Theoretical Physics in CERN in Geneva. Letters
sent to Glaser by Wolfgang Pauli (nicknamed "the sword of theoretical
physics") show Glaser's outstanding scientific status among
theoretical physicists of his time. On the occasion of Glaser's death,
during the commemoration held in CERN, prof. Henry Epstein said that
he does not understand Croatian, but when in need
for details
and formulae, he prefers to consult Glaser's book (written in Croatian!), since
it is reliable
in all details. For more
information see
here (in
Croatian).

One of our best theoretical physicists was Gaja
Alaga (1924-1988), member of the Croatian nobility from
Backa and Bunjevci Croat. He worked not
only in Zagreb, but also at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Berkeley,
Ludwig-Maximilians
University
in Munich etc. In 1955, in cooperation with K. Alder from Switzerland,
A. Bohr from Denmark and B. Mottelson from the USA, he discovered the
so called K-selection rules and intensity rules for beta and gamma transitions
in deformed nuclei.

Nikola Cindro (1931-2001) was a Croatian
physicist, descendant of very old Croatian nobility from 8th century,
from Croatian south (Split, Poljica). He was lecturing in Zagreb, Frankfurt,
Paris and Strasbourg, and occupied the position of vice president of
European
Physical Society. His high quality work was recognized also abroad: he
was a member of Italian physical society and Officier dans l'Ordre des
Palmes Academiques, Paris, 1997.

Zvonimir
Janko (born in 1932 in Croatia), studied mathematics and earned
his PhD at the University of Zagreb. He is professor of mathematics
at the University of Heidelberg, Germany,
and his name is well known
among
experts
in
the
theory of
finite
groups.
Professor Janko discovered sporadic groups named J1, J2,J3,
and J4 in
his honour. They are
called Janko
groups.

Zvonimir Janko in 2007, at the age of 75 (photo by dr. Mario Pavcevic, Zagreb)

The discovery of J1 in 1964, more than
a century after the discovery of the first sporadic group, launched
the modern theory
of sporadic
groups. His group J4, discovered in 1976, has

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elements.
About his research
he
delivered
an invited lecture at the International
Congress
of Mathematicians
in Nice, France,
1970.

Eduard Prugovecki (1937-2003), outstanding Croatian
theoretical physicist, was born in Craiova, Romania (his
mother was Romanian of Polish descent, and his father was Croatian). Having completed his
primary and secondary education in Bucharest, he moved with
his family to Zagreb, where he studied physics and started
his early scientific career. In 1961 he was sent to
Princeton where he received his Ph.D. in 1964. The next
year he
emigrated to Canada, and since then worked at the University
of Toronto. Professor Prugovecki wrote four monographs,
and the last two are

Lavoslav Ruzicka (1887-1976, born in Vukovar,
of a Czech father and a Croat mother, attended the gymnasium of Osijek),
obtained the Nobel Prize for discoveries in organic chemistry, professor
at the Technische Hochschule in Zurich, Switzerland 1939; see Ruzicka links.

Vladimir Prelog, (1906-1998, a Croat born
in Sarajevo, studied in Zagreb), obtained the Nobel Prize for discoveries
in organic chemistry, worked at the Technische Hochschule in Zurich,
1975.
As a
young boy he
was a stipendist of Napredak, Croatian
cultural society in Bosnia and Herzegovina. See Prelog
links. He wrote his authobiography, Vladimir Prelog: My
132 Semesters of Studies of Chemistry, American Chemical Society,
Washington DC 1991 (second edition by Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1998).
Prelog was among 112 Nobel Prize winner who signed and appeal For
Peace in Croatia in 1992.
He himself expressed on numerous occasions his public protest against the aggression
on Croatia and BiH.

The third Croatian Nobel Prize winner is Ivo
Andric,
for literature. We mention here again that Nikola
Tesla refused
to receive the Nobel prize for physics, which he had to share with T.A.
Edison.

PLIVA is today
the largest pharmaceutical company in Croatia and by sales, the largest in Central
and Eastern Europe. Its best selling product
is Sumamed antibiotic.

Mario
Puretic (1917, born in Croatia in the town of Sumartin on the island
of Brac; his true name was Mario Puratic),
revolutionarized the technology of pulling out fishing nets from the
sea by his construction of what is
now known
as
the Puretic
Power Block in
1950s. Until then fishing nets had to
be
manually drawn by eight to ten people, which was an extremely difficult
job. The Marco Seattle company developed Puretic's idea, and it soon
became a standard
mean of
fishing
in the whole
world.
In 1975 the United States Patent Office conferred him a special recognition
for
his patent which revolutionarized the fishing technology worldwide. He
was elected among hundred greatest inventors of the 20th century in the
USA.

Variants
of the Puretic power block
source: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization, UN)

In
1972 the National Bank of Canada issued a new series of 5 dollar banknotes
with
the Puretic Power Block on a fishing boat drawn on the reverse side!
See here:

When Mario Puretic died, his remains were brought from the
USA to his native town of Sumartin in 1994. He was an honorary
citizen of many countries, including Island (many thanks to Ms Nena Kazulin,
USA, for this information).

From Marco
Seattle web site: No single invention has contributed more
to the success of purse seine net hauling than Marco's extensive line
of
Power
Blocks.
First
introduced
in the 1950's the Puretic Power Block line became
the linch-pin in the mechanization of purse seining. Combined with fluid
hydraulic
power technology and new large synthetic nets, it changed the whole character
of purse seine fishing. From those early days the Marco Power Block has
undergone many design improvements to provide the widest available
range of sizes and power
options to match changing requirements.

Anthony
Maglica, holder of hundreds of patents and trademarks,
founded Mag Instrument, Inc, in Los
Angeles in 1955, and
designed Mag-Lite flashlight, which is now an American product
icon, among 100 top products that "America makes best".
The Maglite products have been honored by the Japan
Institute of Design and the Museum for Applied Art in Germany.
Mag Instrument donated thousands of flashlights to aid in the
rescue efforts at the
World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001.
Born in New York, and as a child raised in Croatia, Tony Maglica has plenty
of other interests which include also Zlarin, Croatia, where he
grew up.

Agabekov
SA is world's famous company seated in Geneva, Switzerland, dealing with
exterior lighting design. Mr Youri Agabekov, the founder
of the company, has Croatian roots: his father is Ladislav Zerjavic, from
Hrvatsko Zagorje near
Zagreb.
His products have been used to cover with soft lighting such buildings like
(photos
by kind permission of Mr. Youri Agabekov):

Mr Youri
Agabekov is a Croat born in Russia, living in Switzerland (Geneva) and
in Croatia (Zagreb). His company, Agabekov SA, has 80 representatives throughout
the world. Here is the logo of the company devoted to his wife Branka:

Ralph Tony Sarich (born in 1938) is
an Australian Croat who developed the
Orbital Engine in 1972. He is a recipent of several prestigeous
ingeneering awards like Australian Inventor of the Year 1972, Sir Lawrence
Hartnett
Inventors
Award
1972, Churchill
Medal, British
Society of Engineers 1987 and Clunies Ross National Science and Technology
Award 1991. His parents are Croatian immigrants to Australia.

The service of buying parking tickets via mobile phones is today
widespread worldwide. The service has been conceived and
developed in Croatia.

Daniel D. Gajski, a
hero of Computer Science. Prof.Dr. Franz Ramming wrote the following: "...
Daniel Gajski did not just light the fire, he also fuelled it substantially.
During the last three decades he achieved pioneering results. He was a principal
contributor to the areas Silicon Compilation, High-Level Synthesis, and System-Level
Design. ..."

Marin Soljacic is
the author of the new Wireless
Power Transfer, conceived in 1996. It attracted a substantial
interest of the press (more than 200 articles in leading newspapers
and radio-reports in numerous countries around the world, including:
USA, Germany, Australia, Iran, India, Croatia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy,
UK, Poland, Canada, the Netherlands, Thailand, Dominican Republic).

He is a young Croatian physicist born in the City of Zagreb, where he finished
his secondary school education. Dr. Soljacic is employed as researcher
at the Department of Physics, Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
USA.